영어 모의고사 (자동 편성)

Facing a shortage of caregivers and a rapidly aging population, several countries have begun ①deploying robots designed to remind elderly residents to take medication, monitor for falls, and even offer simple conversation throughout the day. Early trials show that many residents report ②reduced loneliness, particularly when a robot's presence allows an overworked human staff member to spend a few extra minutes with each patient rather than ③rushing between rooms. Critics, however, worry that this framing quietly shifts the goal of care: instead of asking how technology can support human connection, institutions may come to treat a robot's companionship as an acceptable substitute for it, especially in facilities already ④struggle with tight budgets. Advocates for the elderly argue that robots should be evaluated strictly as tools that free up human time for human contact, never as a lower-cost replacement for the contact itself, which ⑤remains irreplaceable.

When consumers compare two products and assume that the one ①labeled "eco-friendly" is automatically the more sustainable choice, they often overlook the complexity involved in verifying such a claim. Life cycle assessment, commonly abbreviated as LCA, is a systematic method ②developed to evaluate the environmental impact of a product across every stage of its existence. This method examines raw material extraction, manufacturing, transportation, use, and disposal, ③compiling data on energy consumption and emissions generated at each stage. By tracing a product from its origin to its disposal, this approach reveals impacts that might otherwise remain hidden from consumers who ④sees only the finished item on a shelf. Without ⑤accounting for these earlier stages, a superficial comparison could mistakenly present the vehicle as entirely emission-free.

A rational approach to decision-making dictates that only future costs and benefits should influence a choice, since resources already spent cannot be ①recovered regardless of what is decided next. In practice, however, people routinely allow such irrecoverable expenditures, known as sunk costs, to shape their subsequent decisions, a pattern referred to as the sunk cost fallacy. A moviegoer who finds a film thoroughly ②disappointing after the first thirty minutes will often remain in the theater until the credits roll, reasoning that leaving early would somehow waste the money already spent on the ticket. Organizations exhibit the same fallacy on a larger scale: a company that has invested heavily in a failing project frequently ③abandons funding it, arguing that stopping the project now would render the prior investment meaningless. Yet continuing to invest in a venture destined to fail merely adds new losses to old ones, ④compounding the very waste the decision-makers hoped to avoid. Economists therefore urge decision-makers to evaluate each choice based solely on its prospective outcomes, treating past expenditures as ⑤irrelevant to the decision at hand.

Marketers have long recognized that perceived scarcity, the sense that a product or opportunity is available only in limited quantity or for a limited time, can dramatically increase its ①desirability, even when the item's intrinsic qualities remain entirely unchanged. This phenomenon, known as the scarcity effect, operates on a simple psychological principle: when something appears ②easy to obtain, people tend to infer that it must be valuable, since truly worthless items rarely generate genuine competition for possession. A retailer who labels a product as "limited edition" or displays a countdown timer beside a discounted offer exploits this inference, prompting customers to make ③hurried purchase decisions they might otherwise postpone or reconsider. Experimental studies confirm that identical products are rated as more desirable and often command ④higher prices when framed as scarce than when the same products are presented as widely and continuously available. Consumers who later reflect calmly on such purchases frequently discover that the item's actual usefulness fell well short of the ⑤urgency they experienced at the moment of decision.

Sensors buried in the soil now report moisture levels in real time, drones survey entire fields for signs of disease within minutes, and automated systems adjust irrigation without a farmer ever walking the rows. For large operations with the capital to invest, these tools have ①measurably increased yields while ②reducing water waste, addressing two problems that traditional farming has struggled with for generations. Smaller family farms, however, often ③cannot afford the upfront cost of this equipment, and some worry that the gap between high-tech and traditional operations will only widen as the technology advances further. There is also a quieter cultural cost that rarely appears in productivity reports: generations of farming knowledge risk being ④preserved by dashboards and automated alerts that few young farmers are taught to question, a loss productivity reports rarely ⑤capture.

Behavioral savings programs of this kind rest on a deliberately modest set of psychological assumptions about their participants. (A) Rather than assuming that employees will consistently exercise the willpower required to save voluntarily, the program assumes the opposite: that inertia, once established in a beneficial direction, will keep participants enrolled without further effort. (B) This modest assumption turns out to be far more reliable than optimistic assumptions about sustained willpower, since it requires participants to do nothing at all in order to keep saving. (C) Traditional financial education campaigns, by contrast, often rely on the assumption that providing sufficient information will motivate people to change their saving habits, an assumption that field results have repeatedly failed to support.

John Rawls proposed an unusual thought experiment to determine what principles of justice a society ought to adopt. (A) Imagine a group of rational people gathered to design the basic rules of their future society, but placed behind what he called a veil of ignorance, unaware of their own race, gender, wealth, or social position. (B) Since no one can predict whether they will be born into privilege or poverty, each person has a strong incentive to choose rules that protect the worst-off members of society. (C) Rawls argued that rational people placed in this position would favor arrangements that guarantee basic liberties for everyone and permit unequal outcomes only when they benefit the least advantaged.

Generative AI systems learn to write, draw, and compose by studying enormous collections of existing human work, much of which was created without the artists' knowledge or consent. (A) Critics respond that the comparison breaks down at scale, since a single AI model can absorb millions of works in days and compete with the very artists who trained it. (B) Supporters of the technology argue that this process resembles how a human student learns by studying the masters. (C) Courts around the world are now being asked to decide whether training an algorithm on copyrighted material counts as fair use or as infringement.

A cricket contains, gram for gram, roughly as much protein as beef, yet requires a small fraction of the land, water, and feed needed to raise cattle. (A) Insects also convert feed into body mass with remarkable efficiency, since they are cold-blooded and therefore spend far less energy regulating body temperature than a cow or pig must. (B) This efficiency has drawn growing attention from researchers looking for ways to feed a global population that continues to climb while arable land remains essentially fixed. (C) Despite these advantages, insect protein has struggled to gain acceptance in many cultures, so food companies have responded by grinding insects into a flour that disappears into protein bars, pasta, and baked goods.

This reveals an uncomfortable truth about the underlying business model itself. Social media platforms rarely show users a neutral stream of information. ( ① ) Instead, recommendation algorithms are optimized to maximize engagement, and content that provokes strong emotion tends to hold attention longer than balanced reporting ever could. ( ② ) Researchers describe this as a distorted mirror: the platform reflects not society as it truly is, but a version shaped by whatever keeps people scrolling. ( ③ ) Some platforms have experimented with reducing the visibility of outrage-driven content. ( ④ ) Yet these experiments consistently saw user engagement drop. ( ⑤ )